


Right down to the second

by nishiki



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst and Tragedy, Blood Loss, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Death, Dying together, Heavy Angst, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Sad Ending, Secret Relationship, You Have Been Warned, inspired by the teaser for Season 5, probably, sad fic, shootout, the criminal and the detective, there is nothing good or fluffy here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 13:42:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16306244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nishiki/pseuds/nishiki
Summary: --- Heavily inspired by the teaser trailer to Season 5! ---They had risen together to power. Two sides of the same coin. Now they fight together and they die together.





	Right down to the second

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I may have seen it wrong because that scene in the trailer was so dark. However, to me it looked like they were standing like this (from left to right): Nygma, Gordon, Bullock, Pengy. So it looked like Oswald either fell or ducked behind the banister and almost at the same time the second person from the left, so Jim, did the same thing. That's how this story came to be. It reminded me a lot of his hallucination of Oswald in the trenches too. So there you go!

He had never pictured it - the end. And now that he was here, at the end of the road, he couldn't even tell if their story even had a beginning and a middle that had been leading up to this point of no return or if it had been just as chaotic as it had always felt to him. And if there had been a beginning, then where? At which point did their shared story begin?

Had their story began with their first kiss three months ago after everything had turned to shit in the backroom of the GCPD with hushed voices and stolen touches, afraid that someone might catch them? No, that didn't feel right. Perhaps, when Jim had started seeking him out more and more often amidst all this chaos and carnage after Valeska’s attack on Gotham? First, he had gone to him in search of aid and an alliance he had never thought possible in the beginning, then under more and more ridiculous pretenses. But no, that was not the beginning either.

No, it had to have been a lot sooner than this.

Maybe on a rainy winter's day at Gotham harbor then as he had been supposed to put a bullet in his head but hadn't been able to do it? Or even before that when their eyes had first met in some dingy alleyway on a rainy afternoon behind Fish Mooney’s bar? Weird how it always seemed to rain when he was with Oswald Cobblepot. No wonder he was always carrying an umbrella as the bad weather seemed to follow him around wherever he went like a personal stormcloud hanging above his head. Maybe they didn't need a beginning, a fixpoint for their story to start for, in a weird way, they had always been one from the moment Jim had arrived back in Gotham City. Two sides of the same coin. Heads or tails.

He blamed the blood loss for thoughts like these. Usually, he was not that romantic or cheesy. He had never believed in fate either.

Even up to this point where their story was ending, they had kept their relationship a secret. It had hurt, yes, and he would have much rather shouted it from the rooftops that James Gordon and Oswald Cobblepot loved each other, but he knew that they would have been dead a long time ago would he have done that.

Now more than ever love was something dangerous in Gotham. And now more than ever this city was unforgiving, cruel and without any hope. The city - _his city_ \- was a war zone and as he was lying behind the steel banister that they were using for cover, his thoughts were drifting back to the war he had fought before coming back to Gotham. And he thought back to the hallucination he once had. _Never leave your unit behind_. He hadn't. He was here now. His unit by his side, Harvey Bullock screaming orders at their remaining men, a ragtag group of the police force and Oswald’s private army of hired muscle, while stealing glances at him and comforting him over the noise of gunfire. Hell, even Ed Nygma was there, ducking into cover, not for him but to take care of Oswald.

Oswald.

He had wanted to tell him - order him - to stay out of this, to let Jim and the rest of the GCPD that was still alive handle the situation at hand. Of course, Oswald was stubborn. He had known from the very beginning that Oswald was a man who would not stay out of a fight, who would not shy away from getting down and dirty. That was only one trait he loved about him so goddamn much that it almost physically hurt him. He had seen him rise from an umbrella boy to the terror of Gotham. And from afar, no matter their quarrels in the past that now seemed like so much wasted time to him, he had always admired his strength and his stamina no matter the hardships he had been facing. Giving up would have been a lot easier for Oswald at times than getting back to his feet and start over from scratch. More than once had he had the opportunity to leave for good and never return, start over somewhere else. But he had stayed and a part of him wanted to believe that he had stayed for Jim, perhaps. Because he had known Jim needed him as Jim had known Oswald needed him too.

The sun needed the moon as the moon needed the sun. There could be no light without darkness. And - oh God - Oswald’s darkness tasted as sweet as honey.

There was so much blood everywhere. Wherever he looked, fallen comrades, fellow officers lay on the ground and clutching their wounds. Some were already dead, shot cleanly between the eyes by Tabitha Galavan, perhaps, some of them severely injured. It was a massacre. However, his eyes were fixed solely on Oswald and the blood gushing out of his chest and pooling out of his mouth as he tried to breathe.

It had happened too fast to recall the details now. He didn't _want_ to recall them. They had stood side by side, Edward Nygma, he, Harvey and Oswald. Oh god, Harvey. The moment he looked at Jim now once more he knew that Harvey knew that he was lost. He couldn't bear to see the pain in his friend’s eyes. He couldn't even bear to see the pain in Edward Nygma’s face, etched into the lines of it and his expressive brown eyes as he was pressing down as hard as he could on the wound in Oswald’s chest.

The bullet had ripped right through his lungs.

He didn't need a doctor to know. He had seen it before. He had held comrades before as they had been choking to death on their own blood. The rational part of Jim knew that there was no hope. Not here, not on the battlefield. Oswald was choking on his own blood, drowning in his own blood and he could do nothing about it. The moment he had heard Oswald scream out as he had been hit, the time had been frozen for just a moment, long enough for Jim to whip his head around and see how Oswald fell back - long enough for another bullet to hit him in the gut. It was almost poetic how they fell at the same time. They had risen to power together and now they would die together. Almost as if it had meant to be this way. Two sides of the same coin.

A few years ago, when he had been younger and more naive as he was now, still blinded by the hope that he would be able to make a change in Gotham, he had imagined death a lot. Coming back from the war, he had imagined death so much it had felt more like a memory. He had always wondered, even in the sweet hours of the early morning that he had spent with Lee or Barbara intertwined in silken bedsheets or with the smell of fresh coffee in his nose, how it would get him and the answer had always been the same for him. He had always known that he would find his end down the barrel of a gun only the hows and whens had been eluding him.

He remembered the times in which he had thought that Oswald was dead and how, though feeling the deep sting of pain, somehow he had always known he wasn't dead and that he would return to Gotham - to him. He had always known he couldn't be dead because this was not how it was supposed to go. Oswald had always been supposed to die at his side, he figured. Rising together, falling together, their fates intertwined.

His head started to become foggy and the world around him was not even bothering to spin anymore. As he lifted his left hand from his gut, in his right hand still his gun, he could see only the blood pooling around him. There was no hope. He could see Lee not too far away, running towards him - not Oswald - with her first aid kit in her hands as if that would change anything about a gunshot to the stomach. He could see the heartbreak in her eyes, the panic of losing him. He wanted to yell at her that she should go to Oswald, that she should save Oswald and not him. He wanted to tell her that Gotham needed Oswald more than the city needed him. There was so much left unsaid. They hadn't talked about it ever since she came back from the dead. A gift from Oswald because if Oswald couldn't have him then … at least he had wanted him to be happy. He had learned his lesson after Isabella, apparently. And after he had heard of this, of Nygma and Lee’s revival, he had been certain that he and Lee would get back together and that Edward and Oswald would finally become a thing. The old flame rekindled. He hadn't liked the idea from the start but, at least, he had thought, Oswald would be happy.

 _They_ had learned their lesson.

Yet, it had turned out differently. Lee had come to him, yes, but there had been nothing in his heart left for her. The realization had struck him suddenly and like a hit to the head. He had no feeling left for her. Not like this. And Edward and Oswald had not become a couple despite it all, despite all the hardships and everything they had gone through together.

Oswald had later told him in their countless hours in front of the stone fireplace in the old Van Dahl mansion, his base of operation, with a glass of wine in their hands, that he had thought Ed and him would be better off being friends than lovers. And just like this, it had happened. A kiss in the backroom of the GCPD, a stolen moment of happiness for the both of them, a bold move from Jim Gordon and all the love Oswald could possibly still give. It had felt right, just like they were supposed to be together like this. Their lips looking like they were meant for this, Oswald's body accepting his as if he was shaped exactly for that purpose. Two puzzle pieces finally locking together, a riddle solved. He didn't know if anyone knew about them until now and part of him didn't care. There was no reason to care any longer.

Ed was not stupid, he probably suspected something. He could read the signs. The hickeys he had sometimes left on Oswald, perhaps. And Harvey? Would he be shocked to learn the truth? What about Lee?

Oh, Lee … She was making her way towards him clutching her bag to her chest, ignoring all the other wounded people around them that could still be saved, ignored Oswald who was gasping for breath, his voice raspy and weak and the light draining from his ice blue eyes. The noises he made were like those of a small animal fighting for dear life, a bird with broken wings lying on the ground.

»Lee!« He heard Ed yell at her but his voice was not as steady as it usually was. It wavered with each word he yelled. »Lee, come quick! Come quick! he’s dying!« The desperation in his voice, the sheer panic and helplessness were honest. Edward was not a man used to war. Oswald and Jim, on the other hand, were battle hardened. They both knew it was the end. Ed, on the other hand, could only repeat the words over and over and over again like a frantic little mantra as if this was going to change anything, his voice only going more and more silent each time he repeated his words as if the realization started to sink in. »No … No, no, no, no, _no_ \- Not like this!«

So much had happened in the past years since he had come back to Gotham. From one war to the next. The Jim he had been back then seemed to be an entirely different person now. A boy scout who had only wanted to see the good in everyone, who had wanted to change everything and make this city a better place without people like Oswald Cobblepot. He wouldn't even recognize himself anymore. The days of Don Falcone, Don Maroni, Fish Mooney and a pastry-skinned umbrella boy with a limp seemed a lifetime ago. At the end of it all, they all seemed to die in the same way, _down the barrel of a gun._

As Lee had almost reached him, he started to see darkness creeping in on him and it was Oswald whose eyes never left him at this moment of utter horror, pain, and finality. This time there was no way out. This was it and he could see that Oswald understood this too. Not Lee, not Harvey. Oswald couldn't move anymore as death was seeping into his bones and made him numb to the world around him. He wondered if Oswald could still hear Ed talking to him, if he could still feel how Ed was pressing down on his chest, his own hands soiled with Oswald’s blood up to the wrists already, his green suit forever ruined. He saw his right-hand twitch as it lay on the ground and it was enough for Jim to mobilize his last bit of strength.

He couldn't feel any pain as he forced his body closer towards Oswald. The adrenaline was making it impossible to feel pain and he thought that at least Oswald wasn't feeling any pain too. He couldn't stand the thought of Oswald being in pain.

»Don't move!« Lee’s shrill voice cut through the gunfire around them, through the smell of sulfur and hellfire but Jim didn't listen and only dragged himself closer and even closer. If this was the end, they should be together.

He could hear Harvey’s voice yell something at him, could feel how his friend grabbed for him to hold him still and could almost feel how his organs threatened to spill out of the wound that had been ripped into him. None of that mattered. He gripped Oswald’s right hand tightly with his own as he had reached it, slick with blood, ice cold just like Oswald’s and could see the flicker of a tiny ghostly smile on his pale, bloody face. His freckles were even more prominent now in the loud neon light around them, the blood all drained from his face. The choked noises he made were unbearable and almost too much for Jim but at least they were together and at least he could press his lips to Oswald’s one more time and rest his forehead against his.

»I love you.« He breathed into his black hair and he didn't care, for once, who would hear him. It was too late to care about any of this. When it came right down to the second when it all would end, he would embrace all of it as long as the world would know that he had loved Oswald and that Oswald had loved him. »I love you.« He repeated again even quieter. »So much.«

The world had become silent once more as he watched how the life completely drained from Oswald’s eyes and as he heard how he stopped breathing, how the choking noises stopped and as he felt how his hand grew limp. A part of him wanted to scream in agony, wanted to shake him and yell at him that he had no right to leave before him but instead he just clutched his hand harder and pressed his lips to his forehead, bloody now from the previous kiss.

He thought back to the backroom of the GCPD, thought back to Oswald in his perfectly tailored pinstripe suit and his favorite purple tie and vest. He thought back to their kiss, how he had pressed him against one of the shelves and how sweet his mouth had tasted. He could only taste iron now. It didn't matter, though. For at least, as darkness finally embraced him too, it was sweet and he was back in the backroom of the GCPD and back to their bed, a secret hideout in Oswald’s house. He was back to Oswald lying in silk sheets beside him, his head resting heavily on Jim's chest and the sound of his deep breathing promising of nothing but happiness for once.


End file.
